In general, however, the stimulating effects of a sense-impression
proponderate over the inhibiting effects, so that we may roughly say, as
we began by saying, that the wave of discharge produces an activity in
all parts of the body. The task of tracing out _all_ the effects of any
one incoming sensation has not yet been performed by physiologists.
Recent years have, however, begun to enlarge our information; and we
have now experimental proof that the heart-beats, the arterial pressure,
the respiration, the sweat-glands, the pupil, the bladder, bowels, and
uterus, as well as the voluntary muscles, may have their tone and degree
of contraction altered even by the most insignificant sensorial stimuli.
In short, a _process set up anywhere in the centres reverberates
everywhere, and in some way or other affects the organism throughout,
making its activities either greater or less_. It is as if the
nerve-central mass were like a good conductor charged with electricity,
of which the tension cannot be changed at all without changing it
everywhere at once.
Herr Schneider has tried to show, by an ingenious zoölogical review,
that all the _special_ movements which highly evolved animals make are
differentiated from the two originally simple movements of contraction
and expansion in which the entire body of simple organisms takes part.
The tendency to contract is the source of all the self-protective
impulses and reactions which are later developed, including that of
flight. The tendency to expand splits up, on the contrary, into the
impulses and instincts of an aggressive kind, feeding, fighting, sexual
intercourse, etc. I cite this as a sort of evolutionary reason to add to
the mechanical _a priori_ reason why there _ought_ to be the diffusive
wave which _a posteriori_ instances show to exist.
I shall now proceed to a detailed study of the more important classes of
movement consequent upon cerebromental change. They may be enumerated
as--
1) Expressions of Emotion;
2) Instinctive or Impulsive Performances; and
3) Voluntary Deeds;
and each shall have a chapter to itself.
CHAPTER XXIV.
EMOTION.
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